Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the The Planted Tank Forum forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Location

Your Location. As precise as you feel comfortable with.

Security Question

While balancing on a piece of wood, two inches by four inches known as a 2x4, John and his friend Sally both spotted a dalmatian inside of a truck with sirens. The animal with John and Sally is a _ _ _?

Insurance

Please select your insurance company (Optional)

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.

Additional Options

Miscellaneous Options

Automatically parse links in text

Topic Review (Newest First)

04-19-2015 12:37 AM

V1peR

Quote:

Originally Posted by burr740

Par

Ok so with my crappy reflectors I might be able to get 90-100 par at 24 inches, i will do that tomorrow , I hope I don't get an algae bloom !

04-18-2015 04:36 PM

mattinmd

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wilderman204

Sry if it's been asked or posted already, but any par value information on the "Fluval Aqualife&plant LED"?? I'm running the 25w model on a 20high. Killer thread btw!!!

This is the best I can find, which is a "heat map" graph of PAR for the 48" fixture at 6" depth:

130 par at substrate? Man how much co2 are you pumping in? Do you have fish? I'm finding it hard to get my plants to grow with only 50 par. Curled gnarled tiny leaves is all I seem to be able to grow.

I'm finding it hard when I see such high par tanks with amazing growth. 5kh water and I drop the ph down to 6.1 and it stays there all day. That combined with 50 par and ei is giving what looks to be like co2 deficiency. I can't fathom how it would even be possible to get enough co2 in the water with such high par. Also use 5kh drop checker that turns yellow green.

Not sure how much CO2, PH drops about 1.2. Yes I have fish, one gourami and several Pristellas, neons, ottos flying foxes, etc. I dose full EI and do 50% weekly water changes...at least. Sometimes every 4-5 days. Also have pretty good surface agitation (you can see in that one pic) and and flow throughout.

50 PAR will grow just about anything, assuming other conditions are met. I have a lot of these same plants in another tank about 50 PAR using only Excel, no CO2.

Honestly, I didnt even realize I had this much PAR until I got that meter a few weeks ago. Always assumed it was in the 80-90 range. I would raise it up some but my homemade mounting bracket only goes this high. And since it aint broke, so to speak...

04-18-2015 04:14 PM

Wilderman204

Sry if it's been asked or posted already, but any par value information on the "Fluval Aqualife&plant LED"?? I'm running the 25w model on a 20high. Killer thread btw!!!

04-18-2015 03:16 PM

mlongpre dxYh

Yeah I've been trying to figure this one out for almost a year now. Been very frustrating. My water quality report for the city of Toronto Canada says that I should have enough Ca and Mg. 35 and 9 ppm respectively. Is that enough of those nutrients.

Too much light causes photoburn, but that's *really* hard to do with our aquarium lights... Full noon sunlight is around 2000 PAR, depending on where you live and what time of year you're talking. 50 PAR isn't going to photoburn anything other than mushrooms and maybe the most sensitive of ferns.

Also photoburn first starts off looking like dark brown patches forming on the leaves, like this basil plant:

130 par at substrate? Man how much co2 are you pumping in? Do you have fish? I'm finding it hard to get my plants to grow with only 50 par. Curled gnarled tiny leaves is all I seem to be able to grow.

I'm finding it hard when I see such high par tanks with amazing growth. 5kh water and I drop the ph down to 6.1 and it stays there all day. That combined with 50 par and ei is giving what looks to be like co2 deficiency. I can't fathom how it would even be possible to get enough co2 in the water with such high par. Also use 5kh drop checker that turns yellow green.

04-18-2015 12:41 PM

burr740

Par

04-18-2015 12:20 PM

V1peR

Quote:

Originally Posted by burr740

Without knowing more about your fixture, ie reflectors etc, here's mine @ ~24 inches. Bulbs are one actinic, one 3000K, one 6700K and a 6500K.

I forgot mentioning reflectors, I have crappy ones, just a chrome foil that is behind the tubes, nothing fancy at all.

Are those PAR or LUX?
131 PAR are a lot of light I like that !

04-18-2015 10:15 AM

burr740

Quote:

Originally Posted by V1peR

I would like to have the highest light possible using my setup (co2+seachem ferts + dirt substrate)

At the moment i have 2 T5HO bulbs at 16 inches from the substrate.
But i would like to use all of my 4 Bulbs (by raising the lighting unit).
This way I will be able to create different spectrums using different kelvin tubes (was think of 1 3000k, 1 4000 kelvin and 2 6500 kelvin)

How much should I raise my lighting unit to achieve this "high" light with 4 T5HO?

Without knowing more about your fixture, ie reflectors etc, here's mine @ ~24 inches. Bulbs are one actinic, one 3000K, one 6700K and a 6500K.

04-18-2015 01:58 AM

V1peR

I would like to have the highest light possible using my setup (co2+seachem ferts + dirt substrate)

At the moment i have 2 T5HO bulbs at 16 inches from the substrate.
But i would like to use all of my 4 Bulbs (by raising the lighting unit).
This way I will be able to create different spectrums using different kelvin tubes (was think of 1 3000k, 1 4000 kelvin and 2 6500 kelvin)

How much should I raise my lighting unit to achieve this "high" light with 4 T5HO?

03-28-2015 01:46 PM

jeffkrol

[QUOTE=Raymond S.;7643233][QUOTE=jeffkrol;7642873]LUX is a subset of PAR..Arguably over sampling in bandwiths that are underutilized by plants..

But on this one...
Unfortunately few manufacturers have spectrum charts/w their bulbs.
But Zoo Med does and sometimes Coralife does.
Not really concerned/w different lots of same bulb. Just under the impression that the red part of the spectrum is essential/critical to plant growth and just noticed that the Zoo Med Ultra sun has little/none of it.
Compare their chart for the Flora and the Ultra sun bulbs. For years I have known that the Flora grows plants very well. But it has poor at best visible light. So using an Ultra sun for a main light so I can see in my tank and
a Flora for the second,shorter photo period bulb is not the best option in my mind as plant growth goes, yet best for visibility in the tank.
Perhaps I'm overly apprehensive about the lack of red in the Ultra sun.

"You have littel control over say, different lots of the same bulb. Theoretically it would be a lot less a problem than say different brand 6500k bulbs..."[quote]

Over time I've painstakingly softened my approach on red per se..
Looking at it this way:
for shallow water plants red is an integral component of "natural" light. BUT that doesn't mean it is "perfect" only it is what they are used to dealing with.
so the whole red thing gets complicated.

What is fairly known is that high blue w/ little red has the ability to change a plants morphology.. i.e stunt or stretch, bigger leaves or smaller. It also has an ability to change pigment contents.. high blue more xanthrophylls ect (more red pigments) but without red light you don't "see" them as well.

Bottom line red is probably more crucial to a balanced "look" plant wise and human vision wise then it is to plant survival and growth.

Thinking about nature.. if you go to a clearwater lake and look 10ft down and see plants, they see little to no red. But what else do you see, maybe one plant variety or 2.. The ones that can "survive" without red.. Would they be happier in shallow water? More than likely..
Would they grow better and slightly different w/ more red.. Probably..

03-28-2015 09:24 AM

Raymond S.

[QUOTE=jeffkrol;7642873]LUX is a subset of PAR..Arguably over sampling in bandwiths that are underutilized by plants..

But on this one...
Unfortunately few manufacturers have spectrum charts/w their bulbs.
But Zoo Med does and sometimes Coralife does.
Not really concerned/w different lots of same bulb. Just under the impression that the red part of the spectrum is essential/critical to plant growth and just noticed that the Zoo Med Ultra sun has little/none of it.
Compare their chart for the Flora and the Ultra sun bulbs. For years I have known that the Flora grows plants very well. But it has poor at best visible light. So using an Ultra sun for a main light so I can see in my tank and
a Flora for the second,shorter photo period bulb is not the best option in my mind as plant growth goes, yet best for visibility in the tank.
Perhaps I'm overly apprehensive about the lack of red in the Ultra sun.

"You have littel control over say, different lots of the same bulb. Theoretically it would be a lot less a problem than say different brand 6500k bulbs..."[QUOTE]

03-28-2015 08:50 AM

Filet-O-Fish

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hoppy

Not all reflectors are the same. The very good ones will show you at least one full image of the bulb on each side of the bulb when you look up at the light. That almost triples the amount of light the bulb emits, since each reflection is almost the same as another bulb. But, poor reflectors have only a small effect on how much light the bulb provides. You need to look at the pictures of typical reflectors in the first post here and see how yours fits in. If it is a very good one you probably will get about 50 PAR at 25 inches. That would be medium light. If that's what you want, then two bulbs should be all you need.

Hi Hoppy,
Thanks for your reply. Its good to know I have 50+- PAR which would be in the medium light range. Just to reconfirm, I'm using 4pcs of T5HOs now with a lighting period of 6 hours. So this 50 PAR is from 4pcs T5HOs right or is it from 6pcs?

I posted a photo of the T5 light set below. The reflects are the exact same type as in the photo ( mirror like finish)

Thank you very much.

Bump:

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattinmd

Hmm,

I'd assumed Filet-o-Fish was using an Odyssea fixture, but looking back that's not explicitly stated, just that the bulbs are Odyssea.

Regardless, if they are using an Odyssea brand fixture with Odyssea bulbs, the 35 PAR should be roughly accurate.

Hi Mat

Thanks for your info.
I have posted a photo of the reflectors in the above post.

The light set which is another brand can hold upto 6 T5hos. The LFS where I bought the set from had only Odyssea brand T5s at that moment. Sadly in my country, T5 lights are not carried by many LFSs.

I have noticed that in Odyssea light sets the reflectors are just one long flat piece of shiny metal.

03-28-2015 04:52 AM

jeffkrol

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raymond S.

Hello Hoppy,
I have a T8 fixture which obviously has a very poor reflector. It's on a 10g tank.
Dwarf Sag barely grows/w it, but Water Sprite does well.
I do have a Mom & Pop LFS where I could buy one of those strip lights used.
If I were to paint the inside of it, what color would help best ?
In easy to find spray paint Aluminium/White are common. Might find Silver at
Hobby Lobby.
The first page(my forum parameters limit a page to 20 post)of this thread suggest
to me that if PAR is actually what the plant uses(as opposed to Lux) then each
bulb, by brand and part number of that brand is a different PAR ?

LUX is a subset of PAR..Arguably over sampling in bandwiths that are underutilized by plants..